Various - Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851

In my last communication on the subject of Henry VIII. , I referred to certain characteristic tricks of Fletcher's style of frequent occurrence in that play, and I now beg leave to furnish you with a few instances. I wish it, however, to be understood, that I advance these merely as illustrative specimens selected at random; as there is scarcely a line of the portions of the play I assume to be Fletcher's but would furnish some evidence to a diligent student of this writer's style: and that, although I think each separate instance as strongly characteristic of Fletcher as it is unlike Shakspeare, it is only in their aggregate number that I insist upon their importance.

The first instance to which I call attention is the use of the substantive "one" in a manner which, though not very uncommon, is used by no writer so frequently as Fletcher. Take the following:—

and the title of the play, The False One .

Compare with these from Henry VIII. :—

Fletcher habitually uses "thousand" without the indefinite article, as in the following instances:

In Henry VIII. we have in the prologue:

The use of the word "else" is peculiar in its position in Fletcher:—

In Henry VIII. , the word occurs in precisely the same position:—

The peculiarly idiomatic expression "I take it" is of frequent occurrence in Fletcher, as witness the following:—

In one scene of Henry VIII. , Act I. 3., the expression occurs twice: "One would take it;" "There, I take it."

Of a peculiar manner of introducing a negative condition, one instance from Fletcher, and one from Henry VIII. in reference to the same substantive, though used in different senses, will suffice:

Of a kind of parenthetical asseveration, a single instance, also, from each will suffice:

"A great patience," in Henry VIII. , may be paralleled by "a brave patience," in The Two Noble Kinsmen : and the expression "aim at," occurring at the close of the verse (as, by the bye, almost all Fletcher's peculiarities do) as seen in Act III. 1.,

is so frequently to be met with in Fletcher, that, having noted four instances in the Pilgrim , three in the Custom of the Country , and four in the Elder Brother , I thought I had found more than enough.

Now, Sir, on reading Henry VIII. , and meeting with each of these instances, I felt that I remembered "the trick of that voice;" and, without having at present by me any means for reference, I feel confident that of the commonest examples not so many can be found among all the rest of the reputed plays of Shakspeare, as in Henry VIII. alone, or rather in those parts of Henry VIII. which I reject as Shakspeare's; while of the more remarkable, I think I might challenge the production of a single instance.

My original intention in the present paper was merely to call attention to a few such expressions as the foregoing; but I cannot resist the impulse to quote one or two parallels of a different character:—

These instances, of course, prove nothing; yet they are worth the noting. If, however, I were called upon to produce two passages from the whole of Fletcher's writings most strikingly characteristic of his style, and not more in expression than in thought, I should fix upon the third scene of the first act of Henry VIII. , and the soliloquy of Wolsey, Beginning—

In conclusion, allow me to remark, that I am quite content to have been anticipated by MR. SPEDDING in this discovery (if discovery you and your readers will allow it to be), for the satisfaction I am thereby assured of in the concurrence of so acute a critic as himself, and of a poet so true as the poet-laureate.

Dec. 10. 1850.

The following song is extracted from the MS. Diary of the Rev. John Adamson (afterwards Rector of Burton Coggles, Lincolnshire) commencing in 1658. Can any of your readers point out who was the author?—